We wanted to do something different, something special, for this week’s SPIN, The Rally Pod.
Both at the DirtFish Women in Motorsport Summit, and in some of our other recent stories, we’ve talked about what has already been achieved, or could have the potential to be achieved in the future. But what about right now? Who’s making World Rally Championship history in the here and now?
There was an obvious trio to which we could turn; three women participating in the WRC, simultaneously together, but also competing against one another.
Reeta Hämäläinen is a WRC2 championship-winning co-driver to Emil Lindholm. Enni Mälkönen did the same in WRC3 with Sami Pajari. And now a third Finn is joining them in the second tier of the world championship: broadcaster turned co-driver Janni Hussi, who sits alongside Lauri Joona.
Getting all three of them together in a Helsinki recording studio was bound to provoke some interesting discussions about rallying. But there’s a whole spectrum of emotions in this episode: as much as there’s talk of the joy of success and optimism for the future, the unfiltered reality of being high-profile sportspeople who are outwardly different from the norm – and the unwarranted criticism it attracts – is also addressed.
“I feel like people don’t think of me so much as a motorsport person,” says Hussi at one point. “So I still get a lot of ‘you can’t do that, you will fail; there’s no way she can do that. They will fail together with Lauri’. They even start to say they want bad things for Lauri because he chose to take me as his co-driver.”
Hämäläinen, the most experienced co-driver of the trio, can’t help but feel exasperated: “That’s just, you know…argh!”
It is, unfortunately, a familiar feeling for Mälkönen: “I remember I heard the same thing when I started…”
And Hämäläinen makes it three for three: “For sure, I do get that also.
“That’s why I stopped reading everything regarding myself on social media. I do get a lot of s***…but everybody gets it.”
It’s honest. It’s funny. It’s eye-opening. This week’s SPIN, The Rally Pod, is not to be missed. Listen to it below or on your podcasting app of choice.
